Images of abuse in Iraq are hitting close to home

CARPENTER

The images from Abu Ghraib were bad enough, but then we learned over the weekend that a Montgomery County native was accused of being involved in the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners of war there.

The discomfort was compounded when I learned that Steven Stefanowicz went to school in the Souderton Area School District in the 1980s. That was when Dottie Wilcox, my cousin's wife, taught there, although she told me Monday she does not remember him.

Saturday's story was accompanied by a photo of the home of Stefanowicz's mother in West Rockhill Township. An American flag hangs proudly in the background, but is overshadowed by a sign that says, "No comment or trespassing!"

Where pride had meliorated the worry over a son serving his country in a perilous land, now there is mortification.

The entire nation is reeling over what happened to POWs at that facility, run by the U.S. military. No matter what one's feelings about the war in Iraq may be, this episode is a disaster. It will tarnish America's reputation for generations, as has happened to other nations.

Stefanowicz, it was reported, was a fine student and otherwise led a productive life. He joined the Naval Reserve and then, right after the 2001 terrorist attacks, he volunteered for active duty and was sent to the Middle East. Other details were murky, but one report had him working as a U.S. civilian interrogator working with military intelligence.

My personal reaction to the scandal began with the nine years I spent in the military (although never in combat). Military life, even without combat, is full of intensity that brings out the best in people.

I must have met thousands of GIs, and not a single one would be capable of the behaviors seen at Abu Ghraib -- at least that's the way I felt about them. I have the same feeling about individual police officers I've known over the years.

Horrendous things happen, however, when government people are given special power and are not held in check. In every government in world history, unchecked military or police power turned into tyranny. If intensity brings out the best in people, a lack of constraint brings out the worst.

America has had its lapses, but generally, we have been a nation of laws that held government power in check -- until 9-11 hysteria propelled the USA Patriot Act, one of the most profound reversals of constraint in our history. It drastically erodes the rights of citizens and gives government authorities frightening power.

I think the Americans in Iraq, ordinarily, would be as consistently splendid as the people I encountered in the military. But they can see the direction in which the nation's current leaders want to go. If those leaders systematically abrogate the rights of American citizens, what does that portend for enemy soldiers?

If you doubt that the people next door could ever be like the people you saw in the images from Abu Ghraib, consider the San Francisco Bay area in 1971, then awash in feelings of peace and love. In that climate, Stanford University began an experiment called the Zimbardo Study. Students were assigned at random to make-believe roles as prisoners and guards in a mock jail.

"Guards" got free rein to break "prisoners." They soon used humiliation and forced them to simulate sex acts. The abuse became so severe the study had to be terminated.

I condemn the behavior of the individual Americans at Abu Ghraib as passionately as anyone. Also, I'm old enough to recall that after World War II, we hanged people who just had been "following orders."

But I believe the abuse of POWs never could have happened if those Americans, our neighbors, were not following examples set in Washington.